


Slice

by ApocalypseKeeper



Category: Original Work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-30
Updated: 2020-05-24
Packaged: 2021-02-25 20:54:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21611827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ApocalypseKeeper/pseuds/ApocalypseKeeper
Summary: A series of short stories that I've written and feel like sharing
Comments: 1





	1. Chapter 1

Dying slow

It was a freezing morning. Too cold for anyone in their right mind to be going anywhere. There was snow up to my knee cap but the day, of course, could not stop for me. I was trying to dig out my car. My hands were frozen. Literally. I didn’t notice until I lose my grip on the shovel and for a moment, I honestly thought I might be missing a few fingers. I took a few deep, frosty breaths before I checked. They were still attached, but dead white and too stiff to move. I ran inside and glanced at the time. I’d been out there less than three minutes. The temperature read in at a balmy -25. A shiver ran through the core of me. I gently flexed my bare fingers and yearned for a pair of gloves. I had nothing but a short, brown coat with a flimsy hood.  
It was my own fault. When I moved north, I should have moved with the intention of moving where it was cold. I had recently gotten rid of all of my favorite winter clothes. I could feel my friends laugh and shake their heads and say, welcome to the north.

Its been days since I had a good day, though, so my humor is quickly fleeting.  
I long to stay home and warm up. I’m very tired, though I’ve just had two days off. It doesn’t feel like enough. Work is exhausting. The kind of tiring that leaves my everything strewn around the room when I’m done for the day.  
I’ve never had such a demanding boss. Her eyes are hard, calculating, rude at the best of times. She doesn’t care about anyone but herself, which is a tragedy. She’s so consumed with herself, she doesn’t see how amazing her staff are.  
I go back out to my car and get inside. I reverse and pull forward, and reverse and pull forward, rocking myself out of the boat that I’ve been buried in. It takes longer than I expected. Still, I should be on time. Its freezing cod inside the car. It hasn’t been working right since winter time began. I never should have brought a car with radiator problems this far north in the dead of winter. I make it just to where I can pull off before it begins to squeal and ding and cry that its dead. I lose power steering and drift to a stop at the back of a nondescript building I’ve passed dozens of times but never looked at. I can’t stop the scream of frustration that explodes out of my mouth. I beat my head against the steering wheel and wail. I curse and scream and grab my phone ad call my boss. Everything inside of me is telling me I should just give up. The fates want me to quit. She doesn’t answer. I try again. It only rings once and goes straight to voicemail. I try the store, and all of her underlings. None of them answer. I’m sent straight to voice mail. I know this game.  
We played it last week when one of my coworkers was late to the same ‘key staff’ meeting. Ignore her. Punish her for having circumstances beyond her control.  
I know I shouldn’t stand up to people like her, but I went and unlocked the door anyway.  
She doesn’t do the same for me.  
I ring them all twice and then go down y limited contact list. One my one I go straight to voicemail. Everyone is still asleep. My hands are frozen. I just want to go home.  
I know I can’t, or shouldn’t, quit until I have another job lined up, but I want to run away.  
It’s like revisiting Highschool. The drama of clique bull shit, except now its all ruled by one demanding, bitchy queen. She tells me how she doesn’t feel like I’m invested the way she wants me to be. Less than a week about, she sat me down and told me how little I seem to matter to her. It hurt. I don’t mind being told I’m not worth it, but the way she did it made me feel busted open and sick. I know her game. I’ve been around people like her my entire life. She’s a bully. She pins points your weaknesses and uses them to try and manipulate you. I knew what she wanted. She wanted to get me to act like her wife. It was a common mistake, in my opinion, among people of power. They seek out someone that they want to be subservient, to obey their commands and hold on to their sail strings while they fly around doing what they think is best. Its never been a position that I crave. When I come into a situation, I see every opportunity to distribute things equally. I want to see everyone on the same level, respected, paid and cared for.  
I told her I didn’t want to get married.  
She told me I needed to decide when my last day was going to be.  
I hate the ambivalence of it. Am I fired or have I quit? I recognized the ultimatum before I said it.  
She wants two weeks out of me. She wants me to look like I quit, but she wanted me gone. I had felt it since the party.  
Oh, the party….

Leita. She’s the only person left on y contact list that lives in this town. My hands are too cold to dial her, so I focus on the building I’m behind. There’s a huge FedEx truck parked out front and there are lights on. I go for the lights. There’s two men just inside the blacked-out doors. I knock and they nod. The door is unlocked. I can’t hold back the tears as I tell them what’s happened. They are trying not to laugh. I glance over my shoulder. Comprehending for the first time, that my vehicle is in a direct line of site with the door they were standing at. A blush creeps up my face, but I feel myself laugh anyway.  
“Oh, you probably saw all that then!” I laugh, they join in. “I’m so embarrassed. My car is broken, and no one is answering. I’m going to get warm and call another friend. Don let me interrupt your day.” They finish their laugh and go about their day. I’m still flustered but the room is warm and I’m already feeling better. I call Leita. She answers and the second I hear a familiar voice, it all comes pouring out.  
“Sorry. Wait. Who is this?” I stop. That’s right. She gave me her number and I was supposed to text her, but I never did.  
“Oh, my god! Hi! Its Tabitha! Uhm, we met the other night at the party? Uhm. I’m so sorry to be calling so early, I’m just… I’m stranded and I don’t have any money with me. Can you please come to get me?”  
“Oh wow! Totally! I just… I just thought this was like a prank or something! Where are you? I’ll be there soon.” I look around for a landmark. My had is reeling. All I can see if the FedEx truck.  
“Uhm? FedEx? I think. I can see bath and body works.” I wander around until I find something with an address on it. I rattle it off to her and promise to text it to her. My phone is going to die so we hang up. I feel again the weight of my unpreparedness. Its always been me, if I’m honest. I go off half cocked and luck gets me through to the other side. Its usually dumb luck, my memorable personality is usually what pulls me out of these situations. When I got lost when I was little, it was usually because I was running around talking to strangers, smiling and introducing myself and telling them all about how I wanted to be when I grew up.  
Not everyone, of course. Even when I was little, I knew how to nose out a nice person among the bad. Like I know my current boss is bad news, I knew Leita would be someone to help in time of need.  
It’s the only way I survive in this world.  
As I come down from the high of everything that’s happened, I focus my eyes through the door I came in at. There it was, in plain English ‘Independent Record’ I recall reading it twice before. When I came up to the building, and again on the mail where I got the address. When it sinks it, I feel a little crazy, a lot dumb. All I can do it laugh at the situation. My friend is calling me back.  
“Dude. It is taking me the opposite way as FedEx, are you sure this is the address?” I let her finish and politely explain my mistake. She stifles a laugh. I find her polite and well natured.  
When she arrives, I climb into the car with a laugh on my face. I direct her to my house. There’s nothing for it. If my boss wants to be a bitch, I can play that game too. We go up the stairs and I smoke her out as thanks, while I wait for my boss to get back to me.  
She doesn’t. There’s not one word for several hours.  
When I start to feel my resolve crack, I remember all the times she’s blown me off and left me stranded somewhere. I wont stand for it. I wont work for a bully.  
Part of me knows this is a huge mistake. Most of me doesn’t care.  
She finally calls right before closing time and chews me out. I lie and tell her I had no other option that to go home because the roads were so bad. I tell her my sister didn’t feel confident in driving across town and I had hoped to solicit a ride from one of them. A shame that not one person answered the phone an hour before we opened, while the store was customer free but full of employees.  
She tells me she’s not sure I should come in the next day and hangs up. I should know better, but I text her something snappy. Telling her thank you for the opportunity and I’m sorry to have left the way I did, but it seems like its for the best. She accepts my resignation despite my intention. I feel foolish but vindicated and breathe through my rashness as the weight of my finances comes crushing down on top of my head. I don’t have a job, I only have a fourth of next months rent and this is the shortest month.  
What the fuck have I done?  
My phones rings again. I expect it to be my boss.  
Its my brother.


	2. I Fell

I Fell  
I want it to be known that I was never entirely mad at being alive. I was actually pretty damn good with it. I guess you could say that I liked it.   
I don’t think I did everything right, but I wouldn’t change anything, not even this moment right now.   
In case you didn’t gather, I just wanted you to know that I’m dying. I fell, am falling, I did not jump. Though, I’m sure that people are going to think I probably jumped. Everything is moving very slowly I don’t know if it’s in my head or not. What matters is that I’ve got time to think about important things. Like… I wonder if anyone is going to drink the coffee I just brewed? Probably not. It’ll be burned before anyone goes inside.  
That’s a shame. I had hoped to have one last cup of coffee before I met death.  
Maybe death will take me out for coffee. 

You know. Falling would have been fine had it been any other roof that I’ve lived under in the last two decades, but this roof, to be frank, is overkill.  
I’ll be a splatter on the ground any second now and theres literally nothing that can save me. Im already half way to the ground. No matter how it feels in my head, Im traveling to fast too be saved.  
I’m surprisingly ok with it.  
I’ve left a lot unwritten, which will mean I’ll leave them wanting more. That’s always been what I wanted to do.   
Mostly, I’m excited to finally meet death. We’ve been casually introduced a few times. It’s a conversation I’m dying to have. Who can possibly have better stories than the end of life?  
I can tell that Im almost there, I can see my front door. Mrs. Nebraskii looks very startled. Its kind of a funny face. Like one you get when you sneak up behind someone and say ‘BOO!’  
I feel quite serene. It’s a beautiful, sunny day in October. It smells of rotting leaves and harvest trees. The air is fresh, the sky is magnificently free.  
I can feel it when I hit the ground. One bone and organ at a time. It’s a kind of pain that I almost can’t comprehend. It is victorious.   
There is time enough for me to see Mrs. Nebraskii running to me, but I’m far more interested in the flashes of colorful lightening that cross my vision. Purples and greens shining into one another. I understand brain death.  
It feels nice. Goodness flooding. I’m ok. 

Goodnight, Mama.


	3. Memories of an Abused Child

THe memories wash over me more and more often lately, sometimes just blips and other times they are entire stories. ITs strange, I wonder if some of them are lies because its like I see myself from above. I had a weird child hood. I was a weird kid. I was a really weird kid.

This one is from above. 

Its cheyenne wyoming, which means Im around 10 years old. Im walking my dog, Crom. Hes a hefty germa shepard with teeth like daggars and an angelic demeanor. At least, to his pack. I loved taking walks but around that time was the the day that my mother finally sat me down and explained the chaos.  
Addiction and all of its ugly friends. 

I recall that it was an overcast day, the cloud hung with the sun, casting soft beams across the aburn leaves. The wind, as it always did, bustled dried leaves across the concrete. There was a strange vehicle parked across from my house. Older model, the frayed paint gave way to rust and the sound of tasteless music rattled the ill fit windows. I knew that the boy who lived across from me was a dealer of some sort. Small time, he’d been to juvie and now to jail. He was proud of it. He had a bad record with young girls too. I knew that from experience too. I had budded early and I always felt his eyes on me, whenever we were outside. As with every person I’d met, even at that tender age, he told me I’d be bangable if I could just lose forty pounds. I looked for him, but he wasn’t outside. There was no one in the car, though the music still brayed on. 

I was supposed to be in school that day but I’d skipped. I always hated leaving the house for any reason that wasn my own. Something told me I should take Crom for a walk that day, so I did.

My mom didn’t have time to drive me to school, she trusted me to get up and go every morning, after she’d gone to work. I did, of course, most of the time. That day I just didn’t want to do it. School seemed like an endless void threatening to swallow me and spit me out. I was just a really weird kid. We moved around a lot so there was no point in trying to fit in. I usually didn’t have to worry about coming back, so I could pull whatever I wanted and never suffer the consequences.  
This was one of the first years I had to go back to the same school after summer break. The others had already turned to their usual fat jokes and hate talk.  
To be fair, I did steal the cookies, and I probably stole that gem stone too. I was stealing so much back then I didn’t always realize I was doing it. I’d find it later, stashed in one of my secret spots and Id have to wonder where it came from.

Anyway, I’ll tell you that story next.

It was fall, I was walking crom. I was walking down the block, west, towards the duck pond. It was alte afternoon, I had another three hours before my mom would get home from work, I figured treating crom to a nice walk was exactly what to do with that time.  
Trouble was, Crom wasn’t acting like himself, normally he sniffed around and trotted, at just the edge of my ability. This time he stayed close to my side, and seemed to be on edge.  
It was his demeanor that made me pay more attention to my surroundings that I normally would have. Crom and I had been through many strange things together even by that point.   
I dont know when I realized I was being followed, but I know for sure I knew by the time I got to the park. I wanted to take the sheltered path, it was my favorite, but I could feel the danger there. I stayed in the sun, walking along the water, It was impossible for my pursuer to hide, there was no one else around. I walked to the gazebo and sat down at the picnic table inside. Crom perched next to me and watched with stern eyes as the man walked past. He stared at us as he did. He was a mouse haired bloke with stern brown eyes and crows feet stamped across his lids. I recognized him as one of my fathers many strange new friends. Crom barked a single time and the man jogged away. 

I decided to sit a while longer and about the time I was leaving, another man appeared along the path. At first, I thought nothing of it, thinking my pursuer gone. Then he turned up along the path and towards the table where I sat. I remember thinking he was rather pretty, with long black hair and cold brown eyes. He wore a leather jacket, a black tank top and blue jeans with a black belt. I knew him from somehwere but I couldn’t put my finger on where from.   
I did the only thing I could think to do and walked around the table, to make sure he couldn’t just grab me if he wanted to. Crom was immediately on edge, not that anyone could blame him.   
Back then, I always carried a little knife with me. I got it out and started picking at the morter in the gazebo.

This is when it starts to get confusing. He sat at the picnic table across from me.   
He knew my name.  
He said:  
“Zoey, your dad is looking for you.” 

I hadn’t seen my dad in a while.He’d bought this mustard yellow van that was tagged all to hell and infested with these huge brown spiders, left it in our driveway and disappeared, weeks earlier. 

So I asked:  
“Can I have your knife? This one isn’t big enough.” He seemed confused by that but thats the only thing I felt like saying, and I’ve never been one to repete myself.

He told me No, I could not have his knife, he needed it.  
Naturally, I asked him why.  
He tried to throw the question back at me, but I told him, obviously, I needed it for puting the morter out of this brick I was stealing.

He decided that talking about the knife was getting him no where and rounded back to my dad. He said:  
“Your dad said it was really important that you trust me. He said that you were his good girl and would listen to me.”   
That hit me in a certain kind of spot.   
If this guy did know my dad then my dad probably told him I went with strangers all the time. I had no bounderies when it came to some random person on the sidewalk.   
What he didn’t know was that I always picked the person who gave me the best feelings when I looked at them. This guy, though he very very pretty to look at, gave me a lot of strange, bad feelings. Crom agreed, the fur on the back of his neck had been raised since the man approached me.

“You really need to come with me, your dad is very worried and you know how he gets when he’s upset.” I dont know why but I took a few shuffling steps forward. I was feeling trapped. To leave, I had to tur my back on him. I could either go back to way I came or towards the way that the other man had gone.   
“Why dont you give me Croms leesh and I can hold your hand, too, doesn’t that sound nice?” He stood up, reaching across the table for me. I didn’t really think, I just swung out with the hand that didn’t have Croms leesh. The blade bit into the mans hand and Crom jerked into a dead run, yanking my upper body off of my legs as he carried me as fast as he could down the steps and out of the park. I saw the mans bewildered face twist in pain and then anger before I managed to find my footing again.

When I was a very little girl, even before this story took place, I remember my grandfather telling me that if I was ever running away from someone, I should never look abck, no matter how tempting, because it would just slow me down.  
Because of this, I will never know if he chased me or not, because once I started running I was barreling with only one thing in my head: escape!

I only stopped when I reached main stree, five miles from my house, a truck pulled over next to me. A man rolled down the window, a familiar voice:  
“Zoey!” Crom stopped and so I stopped and I looked into the car.

I recognized the driver immediately and knew I would return safely to my mother that night.

I had a strange relationship with Jupiter. He was a friend of my dads, and he was definetly a ‘no good tweaker’ like my mom said, but I felt like he was a good guy. It was that feeling that saved his life weeks earlier and that feeling that led me to climb into his truck that night.  
He asked me where I’d disappeared off to and I shrugged and told him I’d had a nice conversation with a long haired guy in a trench coat.

I knew he must have known who he was, because he immediately got very serious with me. He told me that I shouldn’t leave the house alone ever again and I shouldn’t trust any of my dads friends, especially the ones that seemed like they were good ones. That I couldn’t even trust him after this because he couldn’t risk doing me any more favors. He told me that I was very stupid and that if I didn’t want to end up very dead, I’d listen to him.   
Then he dropped me off at home.

I found out decades later that my father was in too deep to some junk dealer in town. That in one possible attempt to settle his debts, he plotted to sell me.   
I am grateful that Im not amoung the thousands of little ones who dont have an awesome dog keeping them safe when some idiot fucks up as a father. Im still prettypissed about everything too. I can think of a dozen other instances like this, where my father put me in a possition of suffering for his own selfishness.

Like after I was raped by my cousin. 

That was such a big ordeal, the way that it was handled. You would have thought that I ACTUALLY murdered someone, which, to be fair, I almost had three days before I was raped. Kind of fucked up that my change of heart was rewarded with someones dick being shoved down my throat, but whatever.

I just remember telling my brother what happened and then everyone in the family deciding they needed to have a one on one discussion with me. My parents sat me down and aske me questions to with clear answers that they wanted. They told me that I was lying and that I needed to be really dure of wha tI wanted to say. I remmebr after mom left the room dad put his hand over my mouth so that his fingers covers my nose too and he told me that I didn’t want tos ay anything silly, right? I didn’t want to tell anyone anything about this because I was a bad little girl that was lying about it. I didn’t want to tell my school, because the school would get mad at him and he couldn’t have them mad at him. I knew that the hand on my mouth was like a spell. A reminder that he was bigger than me, that he could decide when I got to draw air and when I couldn’t. It felt like he was shoving all of my words back into my mouth. It was a lie. I had lied about it. No one had never tried to hurt me Everything was perfect. I was a good girl. I never made up stories. Im a good girl. I never make up stories. I never make up stories.

Sorry, got a little lost there. 

Sometimes that happens.


End file.
